Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

Before setting out to migrate workloads, it helps to know what is NOT supported on Azure Virtual Machines - Note - Microsoft constantly updates its Azure services and information provided here may change 1. Microsoft does not support an upgrade of the operating system of a Microsoft Azure virtual machine. 2. Microsoft only supports server software that runs in the Microsoft Azure virtual machine environments subject to the Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy . 3. Microsoft does not support versions of the Microsoft server software that's running in the Azure virtual machine environment other than the  following : * Microsoft BizTalk Server 2013 and later - some features are not supported on Azure VMs * Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 and later * Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 and later - requires Azure Premium storage services * Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and later * Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 * Exchange Server 2013 and later * Forefront Identity Manager 2010 R2 SP1 and

I passed the Microsoft Certification exam 70-533: Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions  last week. I used the following resources to prepare - *  Exam Ref 70-533 Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions  - The book covers the exam objectives & consolidates all the essential information into some 400 odd pages. I loved the summary & the explanations provided along with the answers for the multiple choice questions at the end of each chapter. Whether or not you write the exam, this book is a great reference to keep. However, considering that Azure is continuously evolving & there is a slightly updated exam curriculum [PDF] , you'll have to use your discretion and the official Azure documentation to make sure you have the latest info on a topic. *  MeasureUp 70-533 Practice Test - The 178 questions with answers & explanations providing the detailed reasoning to options presented in the multiple choice questions helped in the preparati

In his book, " How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life ", Scott Adams recommends the Wikipedia list of psychological & cognitive traps that humans often fall into and says it's a good idea to make psychology your lifelong study. ..just about everything I learn about human psychology ends up being useful. Every psychological on this list can be used to manipulate you. If there's something on this list that you're not familiar with, you're vulnerable to deception. There are also other  lists  of  logical fallacies  to be aware of.  These tricks or illusions of thought  are very sneakily used by politicians and the media to fool people. Click for enlarged image of the Cognitive Bias Codex listing 180 biases Also see:  Fallacies - rephrased

This Week I Learned - *  Azure SQL Database DTU Calculator can help answer the question - "which service tier and performance level should I use and how many database throughput units (DTUs) am I using now?" * Once you have your Twitter archive , you can view your Tweets by month, or search your archive to find Tweets with certain words, phrases, hashtags or @usernames...but not favorited tweets or Likes * Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 is only supported in Azure with Premium Storage *  Zero Distance was one of the first initiatives started by CEO Vishal Sikka when he joined Infosys in August 2014. The idea was to develop new ideas and improvements on every project Infosys works on to create a culture of innovation and to prove to clients the company was truly their partner, not just a vendor. Now that the framework has been effected on practically all of the company's 9,500 projects. Zero Distance monetisation will also help the company earn revenue from those s

Anything in red usually catches your eye. I noticed the error notification " This page is trying to load scripts from unauthenticated sources " with the shield & a red cross at its corner, in Chrome's address bar on accessing a site over https. This appears to be introduced in version 53. Microsoft Edge locks mixed content too, but the icon doesn't really stand out. Based on the wording ("unauthenticated source") of the warning, I initially thought Chrome had a problem with the sites where the scripts were originating from. But after a little digging, I found that the issue was with active mixed content There are two types of mixed content: active and passive . Passive mixed content refers to content that doesn’t interact with the rest of the page, and thus a man-in-the-middle attack is restricted to what they can do if they intercept or change that content. Passive mixed content includes images, video, and audio content, along with ot

Dilbert's boss's  misconceptions on Agile A list of Agile Courses & Certifications: Foundation Certificate in Agile PMI Agile Certified Practitioner SAFe SPC SAFe Practitioner SAFe Agilist Software Processes and Agile Practices ICAgile Certified Professional Certification (ICP) course Agile PgM Foundation Certification Certified SCRUM Master ASF EXIN Agile Scrum Foundation Certified Scrum Developer Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) Professional Scrum Developer Scrum.org - Professional Scrum Master I Scrum.org - Professional Scrum Master II Agile Product Lifecycle Management 9.3 Essentials (1Z0-538) ISTQB Agile Tester QAI Agile Certified Tester

This Week I Learned - *  ARM or Azure Resource Manager templates can be integrated with existing provisioning and configuration management tools such as Chef, Puppet, Ansible, and PowerShell DSC. This feature makes ARM play well with existing DevOps tools * The open source tool Azure Resource Manager Explorer shows you all your resources in a tree view. *  AWS CloudFormation &  Azure Resource Manager   make it possible to manage infrastructure as code. *  Azure Portal Service availability chart shows which of the Azure services and applications are supported on either of the 2 portals (Current & Classic). Unfortunately like most articles in the Azure documentation the page doesn't show the date on which it was created or last edited thereby making it unclear if it reflects the latest info. *  When deploying resources, you typically need to specify a region for the resources. Resource Manager is supported in all regions, but the resources you deploy might not be s

@christosmatskas has written a great article comparing  4 ways to migrate Azure VMs from ASM (v1) to ARM (v2) : ASM2ARM, a 3rd party PowerShell library - fully scripted, but slow and requires downtime Azure PowerShell - no downtime, very fast but supported scenarios are limited  Azure Site Recovery (ASR) - can be managed through UI, Azure Powershell but setup is complicated and takes time MigAz tool - powerful, open-source. Process is not a fully automated It comes with a nice comparison chart too - Also see: Azure Management Models: ASM vs ARM

The top private cloud companies of 2016  based on selections made by a panel of industry expert judges  - Forbes Cloud 100 : 1 Slack Team messaging app Headquarters: San Francisco, CA Headcount: 600 Total funding raised: $540 mil* CEO: Stewart Butterfield, cofounder *All funding numbers are as of last public announcement unless otherwise marked 2 Dropbox Document sharing Headquarters: San Francisco, CA Headcount: 1,500 Total funding raised: $600 mil CEO: Drew Houston, cofounder 3 DocuSign Electronic signature manager Headquarters: San Francisco, CA Headcount: 1,800 Total funding raised: $525 mil CEO: Keith Krach 4 Stripe Online payments Headquarters: San Francisco, CA Headcount: 505 Total funding raised: $300 mil CEO: Patrick Collison, cofounder 5 Cloudera Data storage Headquarters: Palo Alto, CA Headcount: 1,043** Total funding raised: $1.04 bil** CEO: Tom Reilly

As a long-time fan of Scott Adams & an aspiring cartoonist, I loved his latest book  How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life . It doubles up as a sort of biography and a self-help book. The advice is unpretentious & the author makes no claims that his tips will solve your life's problems. He expounds his contrarian theory of failing forward by candidly talking about his own failures and how he has profited from them. In about 250+ pages, he details the patterns of success he has studied from his personal and entrepreneurial experiences in a light-hearted way with some great anecdotes. A core idea of the book that Scott keeps emphasizing is that one should have a system instead of a goal - " a goal is a specific objective that you either achieve or don’t sometime in the future. A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. If you do something every day, it’s a system ..

As part of my learning, I keep looking out for info presented through tables & comparison charts as they  summarize lengthy topics &  are useful to review what I learn. I post them with the tag  ComparisonChart  to revisit occasionally. A comparison of the two ways Microsoft Azure provides to host background tasks : Worker Role Web Job Hosting Self-Hosted – Hosted on a dedicated virtual machine. Web App hosted – hosted within a Web App container. Coupling Decoupled from front-ends and middle tiers. Coupled with Web App which is possibly hosting a web front end or middle tier. Scalability Independently scalable. Scalable along with the Web App hosting it. Remote Access Supports remoting into the host VM. Does not support remoting. Deployment Complicated deployment. Simple deployment. Configurability High. Low. Triggers All triggers have to be programmatically introduced. Supports on-demand, scheduled and continuous triggers. Manage

I loved the simple, minimalist way in which  W3Schools explains Serif, Sans-Serif & Monospace fonts : Generic family Font family (Web Safe) Description Serif Times New Roman Georgia Garamond Serif fonts have small lines at the ends on some characters Sans-serif Arial Verdana Tahoma  Trebuchet MS "Sans" means without - these fonts do not have the lines at the ends of characters Monospace Courier New Lucida Console All monospace characters have the same width On computer screens, sans-serif fonts are considered easier to read than serif fonts. Web safe fonts are fonts that are pre-installed by many operating systems. -0- The serif versus sans-serif debate : Typographer Sarah Hyndman, author of the book “Why Fonts Matter,” found that people saw serif typefaces such as Times New Roman embodying “traditional,” “conventional” and “trustworthy” values while Calibri and other sans-serif typefaces were seen as “confident,” “friendly,” and “honest.”

As part of my learning, I keep looking out for info presented through tables & comparison charts as they  summarize lengthy topics &  are useful to review what I learn. I post them with the tag  ComparisonChart  to revisit occasionally. The following table compares the capabilities of App Service, Cloud Services, Virtual Machines, and Service Fabric (follow the link for any updated info): Feature App Service (web apps) Cloud Services (web roles) Virtual Machines Service Fabric Notes Near-instant deployment X X Deploying an application or an application update to a Cloud Service, or creating a VM, takes several minutes at least; deploying an application to a web app takes seconds. Scale up to larger machines without redeploy X X Scale out to multiple instances without redeploy X X X X Virtual Machines can scale out to multiple instances, but the services running on them must be written to handle this scale-out. You have to configure a load

I was gifted a Lyf Wind 3 smartphone bought through Flipkart. It comes with a complimentary unlimited(?) access to 4G data for 90 days from Reliance Jio. I waited with anticipation to try it out but Flipkart's delayed delivery, the fragile looking handset and the long time it took for Reliance Digital to process the SIM activation , killed all the excitement. I found out that the Guarantee in Flipkart's "In-a-day Guarantee Delivery" means they will just say sorry if they miss the date. The advertised  hardware specs  (2 GB RAM, 5.5 inch HD Display, 8MP Primary & 2MP Front Camera, 2920 mAh Li-Ion Polymer Battery) are impressive for the price of Rs.6999 at which it was bought at. The handset however feels very delicate & the power button is wobbly.  It doesn't feel comfortable using it without a case. Currently, there don't seem to be many sturdy back covers or cases available for this model. The spec says the while both SIM slots are 4G

This Week I Learned - * Currently there are 34 Azure regions around the world with 28 generally available—more than any other major cloud provider.  UK South and UK West are the latest Azure regions to be generally available. *  In addition to being a company, Docker is also an open source project that facilitates the process of deploying and managing containers. Windows containers are now part of that project, with Docker working to fully integrate Windows containers into the Docker ecosystem. *  Uber now has a 17.7 percent stake in Didi, which has invested at least $25 million in Ola. Indirectly, Uber now has a share in Ola. * Many users of the Dropbox file-storage service got prompted to change their passwords last month after it was revealed that a 2012 security breach had resulted in 68 million Dropbox users having their account login information stolen. Files on Dropbox’s servers are encrypted with the 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (A.E.S.), which is an algorithm d

This Week I Learned - * The Second Edition of  the free ebook Microsoft Azure Essentials: Fundamentals of Azure is out *  Target Framework Migrator Visual Studio Extension can help in the migration of .NET projects on one Framework version to another all at once. * Three new vulnerabilities dubbed “Trident” have been recently identified in Apple iPhone Operating System. An attacker, using a Trident vulnerability, may be able to track mobile phones and gain access to sensitive information of the phone user. All Apple iOS mobile device users (iPhone, iPad) are prone to this vulnerability * One of the most important projects of GE Digital,  which now employs 1,400 people, is to build a computer operating system, but on an industrial scale — a Microsoft Windows or Google Android for factories and industrial equipment. G.E. is following an open-source model with Predix, its re-imagining of a cloud-based operating system for industrial applications.providing a basic design, but one